FRONTLINE -- THE MAN WHO KNEW -- JOHN O'NEIL (PBS - TV, September 30, 2011)

FRONTLINE – THE MAN WHO KNEW – JOHN O’NEIL (PBS – TV, September 30, 2011)

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© August 31, 2011

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 coming up, FRONTLINE had a program titled “The Man Who Knew,” which centered on the FBI Agent, John O'Neil.  He had a passion to uncover the plot of al qaeda from the time of the first attack on the Twin Towers, and then came to lead the investigation of the USS Cole in Yemen in which seventeen American sailors died in that suicide bombing explosion. 

Miffed that O'Neil was ignoring her and her people, he was pulled off that assignment by the US Ambassador to Yemen. Consequently, the Yemen inquiry went nowhere.

Everyone should see this program for one reason, and that is how much the human weakness for jealousy, duplicity, chicanery, backstabbing, territorial imperatives, pride and stupidity play into the vulnerability of corporate society to self-implode. 

It is a moot question to ask if John O'Neil could have prevented 9/11 in which nearly 3,000 people lost their lives.  He had been shanghaied out of the FBI by then for the reasons given above. 

By the irony of circumstances, he was head of security for the Twin Towers when the plotting of Osama bin Ladin and his operatives murdered all those innocent people by flying commercial jets into the Twin Towers.  O’Neil died that day in the Twin Towers having had a premonition something was about to happen, but powerless to do anything about it.    

The best people often have sharp elbows and are more interested in results than politeness, more concerned with getting to the core issues than worrying about upsetting the status quo, more committed to doing the right thing than protecting their career or worrying about ruffling feathers.  It would appear that this described John O’Neil. 

This ego logjam doesn’t happen only in the FBI or other government agencies, but in every corporate constructed network in the world.  Incredibly, with all the electronic wonders, it would seem impossible to penetrate the old boy and old girl network, the elite who protect their own kind who have never had an original thought in their lives, not to mention true believers whose passion is directed exclusively to being on the right bandwagon come hell or high water. 

JRF